


Becoming a Hero

by lossie



Series: Friendly Neighbourhood Teenage Superheroes [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Comedy, Coming of Age, Epic Friendship, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/M, Gen, Mutant Powers, Ned Leeds is a Good Bro, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter and Charlie are stupid dorks, Read author's notes for additional warnings, References galore, Slow Burn, Teenage Dorks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-25 07:25:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17720741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lossie/pseuds/lossie
Summary: Being the new kid sucked. Nobody knew it better than Charlie Walters.(Or the one where Peter befriends a teenage mutant by accident.)





	1. Charlie 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back from a pretty long hiatus. Some people were probably expecting me to post something else, but I got a Marvel bug, so for now, you will have to deal with me drowning in MCU feels. Sorry-not-sorry.
> 
> I've been actually thinking about writing a story for the MCU with this OC for a while. In the original drafts she was much older and it never really worked the way I wanted it to. Making her a teen solved a lot of issues I had with the character and I think she fits in nicely with the whole vibe of the MCU Spider-Man. I also really like the idea of Peter having more than one friend. That boy seriously needs more good people who care about his well-being in his life and it shows.
> 
> Hopefully I will be able to finish the story (and its sequel) without much hassle. It seems to be writing itself at this point, so there's a chance I will actually succeed this time around. May the gods of Marvel be ever in my favor (or something)!

_First day of school is what the last circle of hell is all about_ , Charlie thought morosely. She walked behind Ms Warren, her new homeroom teacher, down the busy hallway as if she was being led to the execution block. The woman was talking a mile a minute about extracurriculars Charlie should feel free to take, but Charlie wasn’t really paying that much attention to what was being said. She was too focused on the fact that people were staring at her like she was the newest exhibit at the local zoo. They were whispering to each other when she passed by, probably gossiping about her, and because of that all she could think about was how she really, _really_ hated being the new kid.

Admittedly, it was the same every time she changed schools, but it didn’t make it any easier. She knew her arrival would probably be old news a week from now. Hell, something could happen a moment from now - like a fist fight or a prank – and it would most likely make her existence completely insignificant to the student population of Midtown High. Still, no matter how many widely optimistic spins she pulled on the situation, it didn’t make her desire to become invisible any less powerful, because here and now she was the centre of everybody’s attention and that sucked big time.

The problem with that trail of thought, and the whole idea that invisibility could become her safety blanket, was that she actually could do just that. Trying to seem invisible while not actually becoming invisible was some sort of impossible to solve logical riddle that Charlie was not amused by. As if being a teenager didn’t suck enough on its own, she had to be stuck with some sort of mutant mumbo-jumbo superpower that made her feel like a complete and utter freak.

Come to think of it, she could actually feel the telltale tingle in her fingertips. If the fingers were tingling, it meant that they were already becoming transparent. A quick glance confirmed her suspicion and Charlie quickly put her only partially visible hands into the pockets of her hoodie before reluctantly tuning in to whatever her teacher was saying.

“-lters? Miss Walters?” Charlie snapped her head up the moment she realized she must have spaced out for far longer than she thought. Blinking owlishly, she locked eyes with Ms Warren who was looking at her worriedly. “Child, are you alright?”

“Em, y-yes?” She stuttered out. ”I mean, um, yes. Yes I am, ma’am. ”

The woman gave her a sceptical once over.

“If you say so,” she then said after a moment, even though she didn’t seem particularly convinced. “Well, as I was saying, I’ll try and get somebody to walk you to your classes this week. The campus is big enough to get lost in even when you know your way around.”

“Oh. That’s, well, that’s nice. Thank you.”

“Mhm,” the teacher nodded with a small smile. “Now, your locker. The number’s 1185.” She stopped in front of it and tapped her hand on the metal doors. ”I wrote down the code on the campus map I gave you earlier. Don’t lose it. Your first period today is Physics. With me. The classroom is just down the hall, second to last door on the left, so you shouldn’t have trouble getting there. We’ll figure something out about that guide after class, alright?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good. I’ll see you in class then.” With that Ms Warren turned and marched away, soon disappearing from view in the sea of students mingling around.

Well, as far as first meetings with homeroom teachers went, this one was pretty much painless. It was also good to know that Ms Warren didn’t care enough about Charlie’s weird behaviour to ask questions. The woman probably wrote it down to first day nerves or something, and would hopefully forget about it soon. It could make Charlie’s life in Midtown much easier than it had been in any previous school. The fact that the woman taught one of her favourite subjects was just another bonus.

She smiled to herself, quite happy with how things were going so far, before checking if her fingers had returned to normal. Thankfully, her powers were being very cooperative and she could safely unload her books into the surprisingly clean locker.

The bell rang a few minutes later. Charlie quickly grabbed her Physics textbook, slammed the locker shut, and practically raced down the hallway, making it into Ms Warren’s classroom just in time.

The lesson topic turned out to be something she had already covered in her previous school in Florida. It was basically just an introductory lecture to thermodynamics and they would be doing some experiments during the following class on Wednesday. She was kind of regretting leaving her old notebook at home and made a mental note to bring it with her to the next class just in case. There was an upside of being slightly ahead with the material – she could sneak glances at her classmates without falling behind.

The kid in a Star Wars T-shirt and a red hoodie that she was sitting next to was busy taking notes, but he smiled at her when he noticed her looking.

“Nice shirt,” she mouthed to him and he gave her a thumbs-up before going back to his notes.

The girl sitting in front of her was writing fast enough to be causing some permanent damage to her arm muscles. The boy sitting to the girl’s right seemed completely bored with the lesson. He was doodling something in his notebook instead of listening to the teacher and, judging by his laid-back pose and rather dismissive attitude, he kind of struck her as one of those guys she would want to stay away from. She quickly averted her eyes before he too noticed her staring. For some reason she was sure he wouldn’t be as nice about it as her desk buddy. He practically exuded jerk vibes and she really didn’t feel like being labelled a weirdo on her first day of school.

She made a few notes and even gathered enough courage to answer one of Ms Warren’s open-class questions, but for the most part she spent the time during the lesson looking at each student in the class, trying to determine which ones seemed nice and who she would rather avoid. Most of her classmates actually seemed to enjoy the lecture and even asked their own valid and in-depth questions. She was starting to realize that maybe getting into a proper science-focused school had been a good idea. If anything, it was a chance for her to openly enjoy something she loved and not be ridiculed for it.

As she gathered her materials into her backpack at the end of the lesson, Ms Warren approached her desk.

“Enjoyed your first class?”

Charlie smiled. “Yes, ma’am. I, um, like physics a lot, so...”

“That’s good to know,” the teacher said. “I don’t think I mentioned it before, but we have a pretty dedicated decathlon team that I think could use someone like you. In any case, Mr Harrington is always looking for new students to join.”

“I will, um, think about?”

Ms Warren glanced behind Charlie. “Actually, Ned can take you to a meeting today, right Mr Leeds?”

“Um, sure? I guess so?” Charlie’s desk partner said hesitantly as if he wasn’t sure of the answer. He then looked at her with a nervous smile and added, “I mean, if you’re interested? We’ve had the same team since forever, so it would be nice to, you know, get someone new to join us. Or you could just come in and see if you like it or not. You don’t, um, _have to_ join or anything.”

“Um, okay. Sounds fun?” And it did sound like fun. She had always wanted to join a club, but never really got the guts to do it. Maybe it was the time to just do it. Besides it wasn’t like she had anything else planned after school other then catching up on some Netflix and binging on Chinese leftovers.

“Perfect!” Ms Warren clasped her hands and grinned. “Also, Ned, would you mind showing Charlotte around the school? I was going to ask Liz, but I think that girl has too much to do already, what with the Homecoming committee, the school council, and running the team...”

“Yeah, sure thing, Ms Warren!”

With that out of the way, Ms Warren thanked Ned, added that Charlie could always come to her if she needed anything (though it kind of sounded as if the woman was hoping Charlie wouldn’t need anything ever), and then she went back to her desk, presumably to sort out some paperwork. Charlie waited for Ned to finish packing his things and the two of them left the classroom a moment later.

It was either good planning on Ms Warren’s part or simply lucky coincidence that they actually had a lot of classes together. The only differences in their schedules were Ned’s AP English and Literature and Charlie’s two foreign language labs.

“You’re taking _both_ French _and_ Spanish?” Ned asked her incredulously during lunch break when they were waiting in line to get their food. “Are you, like, super human or something?”

“I could ask you the same thing, Mr Advanced English.”

“Oi, I like reading!”

“Me too. I’m not really into fiction all that much though.”

“Really? What do you like then?”

“Um, I read a lot of science journals,” she admitted. ”Not that I understand a whole lot of what they are about, so I have to look stuff up all the time, but I try my best. I’m game for basically anything about mechanics. And space.”

That seemed to catch Ned’s attention and he immediately brightened up. “You like Star Wars, right?”

She gave him an are-you-crazy look. “Um, duh? Who doesn’t?”

“Hell yes!” Ned fist pumped. “Dude, that’s _so sick_!”

Charlie snorted. “You think so?”

“Yes!” He exclaimed as he happily loaded his plate with mac’n’cheese. “Wait till Peter finds out. Dude’s gonna freak.”

“Um, why? And who’s Peter anyway?”

“Oh, right. You can’t possibly know who he is.” Charlie was pretty sure that if Ned wasn’t holding the trail, he would have facepalmed. “Peter’s my best buddy. A little on the weird side, but real smart. Like, _scary_ smart. Like, I’m pretty sure dude doesn’t study for anything ever and he still somehow gets the best grades in our year. He should be at school tomorrow, so you can, you know, judge for yourself.”

“Alright,” she responded, snatching the last fruit cup and an apple. That Peter sounded like a nice kid and if he was friends with Ned, he couldn’t possibly be a bad dude. “And why is he going to freak?”

They moved away from the line and found a mostly empty table at the back of the cafeteria.

“Hey, Michelle,” Ned greeted the only other person at the table and the girl hummed something noncommittal in response. He sat down and turned to her with a toothy grin. “Well, for one, you’re the first person besides Peter who actually noticed the pattern on this shirt is Star Wars themed!”

Charlie looked at Ned’s T-shirt which was covered in Stormtrooper heads and snorted. The pattern was really small, so you had to either know the design of the iconic masks by heart or look really closely to be able to recognize it.

“My mom loves the original trilogy,” she explained as she took a seat next to Ned. “I basically grew up watching this stuff.”

“Your mom sounds super cool,” Ned told her with a smile. “Mine just barely tolerates it on most days.”

They spent the entire lunch period talking about Star Wars. They listed their favourite moments from the original series, briefly discussed their favourite characters, and speculated a bit about whether or not the reboot, the first part of which would be hitting theatres in a few months, would be any good. When the break ended, they made their way to the next class still talking animatedly and then continued talking in hushed whispers during Chem lab. For the first time in years Charlie felt that she could actually make a real friend and the idea was exciting to say the least. She couldn’t honestly remember if anybody has ever been this nice to her on her first day. Plus Ned and she shared a lot of common interests, and he never once asked why she transferred to Midtown or moved to New York City, which was a nice change of pace. Usually people more or less bombarded her with questions right away.

Unfortunately, they had to split up after Chem lab. Ned dutifully walked Charlie to her French class and assured her that he would pick her up when the lesson was over before making his way to the library to catch up on some homework before the decathlon meeting.

French was pretty chill. Charlie was paired up with the girl she sort of met during lunch, Michelle. The girl was kind of nuts, but in the best way possible. She made a lot of snarky comments about their teacher and fellow classmates, and they actually had a pretty decent discussion about their favourite books, even if it was in broken French. Charlie discovered that Michelle was also in the decathlon team and the girl even offered to walk her to the meeting, but Charlie declined, deciding to wait for Ned instead.

“Suit yourself,” Michelle said with a shrug, leaving Charlie standing kind of awkwardly in front of the language lab.

Thankfully, Ned arrived a moment later and the two of them made their way to the auditorium in silence.

Mr Harrington, the Science teacher and the academic decathlon team’s coach, turned out to be less than thrilled to see her. Apparently he was one of those guys who really didn’t like surprises and nobody had warned him that Charlie was interested in joining the team. He gave her the entrance test either way, telling her to take her time and just give it back when she was done so he could check it at a later date.

There were six sheets of paper in total, completely covered in questions on both sides. The sheer amount of them made Charlie kind of regret even coming here. She let out groan of frustration as she sat down at the back of the room and got to work. She so didn’t want to make an idiot out of herself in front of all these people. For Christ’s sake, she shared classes with at least half of the team! If she failed this test, it would be really embarrassing to have to work with them for the rest of the year. The questions were hard too. Then again, she honestly didn’t know what else she had been expecting. Decathlons weren’t for idiots, after all. Unfortunately, her brain was still a bit rusty after summer and she struggled a little with some of the more complicated questions. In the end she somehow managed to answer all of them, although she highly doubted she got them all right.  She handled the finished test to Mr Harrington and took a seat on one of the empty chairs near to stage to quietly observe the team as they went through some drills.

As she watched them practice, Charlie’s gaze kept wandering back to the team leader, Liz. She couldn’t help thinking that the tall dark-skinned girl was probably the prettiest person she had seen in school that day. And she was definitely one of those lucky girls who had both looks and brains going for them, because she obviously didn’t end up as team captain by accident. As hard as it was to admit it, Charlie had always envied people like Liz a little bit. Well, to be completely fair, she generally envied anyone who wasn’t a mutant. Growing up with powers was cool only on paper. Superheroes, like the Avengers or even X-men, made having powers look so easy and effortless. Real life was different than that. Sometimes Charlie honesty wished that she could be just like Liz – that she could be just a girl. Instead she was stuck in this weird body that didn’t want to do what she wanted it to do half the time.

Somebody’s phone chose this moment to start ringing, successfully pulling her away from her dark thoughts. The opening song from _“_ Kim Possible” played at full blast for around ten seconds before Charlie realized it was actually _her own phone_ that was ringing. With her face as red as her hair, she quickly fished it out from the bottom of her bag and then excused herself to answer it in the corridor.

“ _Hello, pumpkin_!” Her mom greeted her happily. “ _You home yet?_ ”

“Um, no. Actually, I have this, um, thing at school...”

There was a moment of silence.

“ _Oh no, don’t tell me you’re in detention right now. It’s your first day, sweetie! We talked about-_ ”

“What?! No! I’m not-! What the-! Mo-om! Just no!” She spluttered indignantly, very offended that her mother actually thought about something like that. The fact that she had ended up in detention on the first day of school in the past for accidentally setting her desk on fire during workshop was completely beside the point.

“ _Really? Then what is it?_ ”

“A, um, a club meeting. Sort of.”

“ _A school club?! Wow! That’s amazing, honey! You’ll have to tell me all about it when I get home, okay?_ ” Charlie could imagine the smile on her mother’s face. “ _I’ll  pick up something nice for dinner. How does that sound?_ ”

“Awesome, mom.”

“ _Good. Now, get back to your club meeting and be extra careful on your way home, okay? Love you!_ ”

“Love you too,” Charlie muttered, even though her mom had already hung up.

She slipped back to the auditorium with a smile. After a moment of internally debating whether it was a good idea or not, she took her backpack and made her way over to where Michelle was sitting, plopping down beside her on the wooden floor. The girl didn’t look up from her book or offer any form of greeting, but she also didn’t tell her to get lost, which was kind of a win in Charlie’s opinion.

It was certainly not the best day of her life, but as far as first days went, it wasn’t half bad either.


	2. Peter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think a bit of a **trigger warning** is in order, because Peter is not the happiest boy in this chapter.
> 
> Enjoy :)

Peter barely made it to school on time.

Well, technically he arrived five past eight, but luckily his first period on Wednesday was English. The teacher, Mrs Winterhalter, was chronically late and entered the classroom when he was already sitting down, so she couldn’t exactly mark him down for tardiness.

Win-win situation on all fronts if anyone asked him.

The lesson topic kind of went over Peter’s head, since he drifted off a few minutes in. He tried to pretend that he wasn’t really sleeping, but he had a sneaking suspicion that Mrs Winterhalter knew exactly what he was doing despite his lacklustre efforts to conceal it.  She was also aware that Peter – just like pretty much everyone else in his class – wasn’t really good at English. She basically expected everyone to do the bare minimum and didn’t bother to discipline the class unless they got really out of hand. What it meant in this particular case was that as long as Peter didn’t interrupt the class she would likely let him catch a few winks without kicking up a fuss about it.

He kind of felt bad for acting this way, though. Her lessons weren’t the worst English classes he ever had. In fact, she was a really good teacher and made the subject seem fun even to the most reluctant students. Still, Peter had had a pretty rough few days and he highly doubted he would be enjoying any class that day no matter how much he liked or disliked it. In fact, the idea of sitting through double Chem lab made him want to crawl into a hole and die.

Jet lag had properly set in the day before, making him act like a zombie. He honestly felt like he had sleepwalked to school, because he couldn’t quite remember how he got there. It was the main reason why he was absent from school an extra day after returning from Berlin with Mr Stark. His internal clock was all sorts of messed up at the moment, so Aunt May had decided to let him stay home on Tuesday in order to recuperate and Peter spent the entire day napping. Not that it helped all that much. At this point Peter doubted that any amount of sleep could help him recover.

Even thinking about the new Spiderman suit, which was tucked away at the bottom of his backpack, couldn’t raise his spirits. Given his physical condition, he would have been more of a menace than help if he decided to do superhero stuff after school. Superheroing when sleep deprived sounded just as safe as driving in that state and Peter was many things, but suicidal wasn’t one of them.

When the bell finally rang, Peter was one of the last students to exit the classroom. He dragged himself to his locker in order to get his Chemistry book. As he neared his destination, he realized that there was someone standing in front of the locker next to his – a locker he knew for a fact had been unoccupied for a solid year. The first thing he noticed about that person as he approached them was their hair. It was sort of defying gravity and also ridiculously bushy. The person turned around and Peter blinked a few times in surprise.

He was certain he had never seen this girl before.

She noticed him staring right away and smiled at him a little before she closed her locker and walked way. Peter barely resisted the urge to smack himself as he followed her with his eyes. True, social interactions weren’t his forte, but this was pathetic even for him. He felt like a total idiot for just gapping at her with his left hand awkwardly raised mid-way between his body and his locker, but he sort of couldn’t help it. She was really pretty. And Peter was notoriously bad at acting like a normal person around pretty girls.

Deciding to forget about that awkward interaction for the sake of his sanity, Peter quickly grabbed his textbook and made his way to the French classroom.

As luck would have it the bushy-haired girl was there, sitting next to Michelle and right behind where Peter himself usually sat. A very irrational part of his brain made him want to hightail it from the room before she saw him and never come back. The reason as to why he was so jittery was unclear. Yes, she was pretty, but she wasn’t Liz, and he honestly couldn’t understand why his brain was doing him dirty like that and making this whole situation up to be worse than it actually was. He was willing to chuck it down to exhaustion and being hyper alert as a result, but a part of him was also acutely aware that he would be lying if he did that.

Honestly, it was not as if he had never seen or talked to a girl before! What the actual hell was wrong with him today?

He tried to act casual as he took his seat. Luckily, the girl was too busy going through her notes to pay him any mind, although it didn’t stop Peter from feeling uncomfortable during the lesson. He had this irrational fear that she would think that he was creepy, because the chances of them ending up in the same room after just discovering that they were locker neighbours seemed slim to none. But then again, he was probably just working himself up over nothing. Coincidences like that happened all the time. After all, he had the same classes with lots of people and there was nothing weird about bumping into them multiple times per day. At least that’s was he kept telling himself for the duration of the lesson and up until he got to Chem lab.

“This can’t be real,” he muttered to himself, staring at the girl who was not only sitting in his usual spot, but also talking to Ned of all people.

He approached the desk cautiously, wondering how Ned even knew this girl and why it seemed as if the two of them were already best buddies. He just stood in front of the desk without being noticed and he kept looking at the girl like an idiot. Up close he could see that she had put her hair in some sort of a messy updo with a few reddish curls framing her face. It made her look even prettier.

Even though he couldn’t have been standing there for longer than a minute at most, it sort of felt like forever, and the longer he stared at her, the creepier he felt. She eventually did notice him and looked in his direction, her brows furrowing in obvious confusion almost immediately.

_Wow,_ Peter thought fleetingly. _That’s a lot of freckles for one face_.

He must have spaced out again, because Ned had to pat him on the shoulder a few times to get his attention.

“Dude, you okay?” he asked, sounding a bit concerned.

_Humiliation, thy name is Peter._

“What? Yes! Totally. I’m fine.”

The look his friend gave him in response begged to differ.

“R-Really. I’m, um, good,” he said. “Just a bit, um, tired?”

“Must be, since you slept through English,” the girl remarked. Her voice was neutral, but Peter got the feeling that she was making fun of him even if what she said was completely true. Also, he must have been really out of it in English if he somehow managed to miss the fact that she was there too.

Ned snorted. “Mrs Winterhalter must have loved that!”

“I don’t think she cared,” Peter replied. “You know how she is.”

“True. You’re so lucky you got her...”

Peter was indeed grateful for this small miracle. The woman who taught Ned was a legend in Midtown and everybody was afraid of her.

“So, you guys already know each other?” Ned said, changing the subject.

Since there was no way of saying that he had been staring at the girl for hours without sounding like a creep, Peter settled for a non-committal shrug.

“He’s the Peter you told me about, right?” The girl asked Ned who responded with a nod. “Oh, okay.”

 She looked at Peter with a smile. “Nice to meet you. I’m Charlie.”

“Yeah, nice to meet you too.”

Before the conversation could move past the introduction the break ended. Charlie took it as her clue to move to another desk and paired up with Betty while Peter sat down next to Ned like usual.

Their Chemistry teacher, Mr Cobbwell, burst into the classroom slightly out of breath a moment later with the last ring of the bell.

“My apologies. The photocopier decided it would be fun to print the worksheets at random,” he said as he placed a stack of haphazardly organized papers on his desk and the students laughed.

Everybody knew that the all-in-one photocopier in the teachers’ lounge – affectionately referred to as Crap-E – was the most temperamental piece of equipment known to mankind. The thing malfunctioned at least once a day and seemed to be doing everything in its power to make the lives of Midtown’s faculty more difficult one piece of paper at a time. This time the damage wasn’t as bad. The handouts were a mess, but they were at least legible, even if making sense of the correct page order took a while to figure out.

The lesson progressed like usual. They were halfway through the first lesson and just staring on the experiment of the day when Ned said something Peter had been both dreading and expecting.

“You like her,” his friend whispered to him.

There were honestly days that made Peter wish Ned wasn’t so perceptive or rather that he didn’t know him well enough to notice such things.

 

“I’ve no idea what are you talking about,” Peter said in response. The obvious lie would have been much more convincing if he wasn’t blushing.

“I know what I saw.”

 “It was nothing.”

“A whole lot of it too,” Ned pointed out with a shit-eating grin.

Peter rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Seriously, dude?”

“Yup, totally. I mean, this is a historic moment! The first time you even looked twice at a girl who wasn’t, you know, _you-know-who_.”

“Voldemort?” Peter blurred out before he could stop himself and Ned burst out laughing.

Mr Cobbwell spared them a look of clear disapproval before going back to reading the newspaper and a few people at the neighbouring desks glanced over to see what was going on, but nobody seemed interested in the reason behind the commotion, which Peter was really thankful for. He didn’t need anybody to know that he was discussing his maybe-sort-of-kind-of-but-not-really crushes during a lesson.

 “Hehe, she-she certainly p-put, hihihi, a-a _spell_ on you,” Ned managed to wheeze out after a few minutes of laughing hard enough to make himself cry.

“That was cheesy as hell, dude,” Peter said with a frown. “And sort of disgusting.”

Ned took a few deep breaths to calm down before speaking. “And hilarious. You forgot about that.”

Peter snorted. “Mm. Keep telling yourself that.”

“Oh, I will. My comedic genius is unparalleled and you know it.”

“Can’t say I’ve noticed anything genius about it.”

 “I’m just trying to help you and you treat me like that?” Ned mock-gasped, putting a hand over his heart. ”That’s so cold, man.”

“I don’t need any help.”

“Really?“

“Yes.”

Ned stared at him for a moment, his eyes full of disbelief.

“Pete,” he finally said. ”Hate to break it to you, mate, but you literally spaced out, because you were staring at her so hard, so don’t try and tell me-”

“Can we _please_ change the subject?” Peter cut in. At this point he was starting to reach the level of uncomfortable that made him want to run for the hills.

His friend observed him quietly and then shrugged. “Sure, whatever. If you want to live in denial...”

Peter put his head in his hands and groaned. “Ned, _come on_.”

“Alright, okay. I’m stopping.” He put his hands up in surrender. “But she’s still sitting with us at lunch, so you need to get your act together.”

That sounded like a terrible idea.

“What. Why?” He asked.

“Well, because I decided that we’re all gonna be friends and you have to deal with it?”

There was a moment of silence.

“That makes literally no sense.”

“Trust me, it will,” Ned told him with a smile.

That was thankfully the end of the discussion and Peter couldn’t have been happier. For the next hour they focused on the experiment, which was easy enough to follow through once Peter could actually concentrate on doing it instead of trying not to die from embarrassment. True to his word Ned refrained from mentioning anything to do with either Charlie or Liz, although Peter was certain the silence wouldn’t last long. Ned would surely be back to nagging him the first chance he got. It was the main reason why the idea of sitting through lunch with Charlie was so intimidating.

To say that Peter wasn’t looking forward to it was the understatement of the century.

-

If Peter could put the most awkward moments in his life on a scale, he would have given Wednesday’s lunch a spot in the top three.

As much as he wanted and tried to act natural around Charlie, he simply couldn’t do it, which resulted in a lot of embarrassed mumbling and half-assed responses every time the girl spoke to him. By the end of the thirty minutes from hell Peter wanted to smack himself silly. He had been so rude to her that he honestly doubted she would want to talk to him ever again.

She did sort of stop trying to engage him in conversation for the rest of the day, but she didn’t give up completely. In fact, she was talking to him once again the next day as if nothing happened.

Peter couldn’t quite decide if he was happy about it or not.

“You gotta stop being an ass to her,” Ned told him as they stood in line during lunch on Thursday. Charlie had brought sandwiches with her and was already waiting for them at the usual table. Because she wasn’t with them, Ned decided it was the perfect time for a heart-to-heart.

“I’m not being-” The look Ned gave him made him shut up almost immediately. Also, he was probably right.

“You so are,” his friend said pointedly. “Honestly, she must think you hate her or something.”

“B-But I don’t!” Peter spluttered in shock.

Ned sighed. “Yes, I know that, Pete. You’re just being very, um, _you_. And I know that you have this thing with girls...”

“Oh my God, Ned, please don’t finish this sentence,” Peter all but begged, feeling his face heat up in embarrassment.

This conversation was fast approaching the mortification level of that one time when Aunt May decided to give him a sex talk when they were watching ‘A Scandal in Belgravia’ just because he went red in the face when Sherlock’s phone moaned instead of ring and he wasn’t here for it.

“Sorry,” Ned apologized. “Shouldn’t have said that.”

“You think?”

“But I’m still right!”

_Jesus in heelies, who gave Ned the right to be so freaking stubborn?_

“The thing is, I am trying, okay?” Peter tried to explain in his defence. “It just-I just-it’s not... I-I’m doing my best!”

“Yeah, your best impression of a dick.”

Peter grimaced. That was an unfairly good point and he couldn’t disagree with it.

They were quiet for a few minutes as they got their utensils and then went about picking some food. When they were done and about ready to head to the table, Ned spoke up: “Just try being less you for a minute, okay? She is really nice, you’ll see.”

Peter didn’t say anything in response, but nodded half-heartedly. Was there even a good way to respond to something like that? He knew that Ned had good intentions and wasn’t trying to be mean, but the words still stung. Peter’s insecurities liked to rear their ugly heads at times like this, reminding him that he was a good for nothing loser with social anxiety who only had one friend and couldn’t talk to people without getting himself into a frenzy. Sometimes he honestly wished that Peter Parker would just disappear and that he could simply be Spiderman for the rest of his life. Once he put the mask on, he became a different person and everything seemed so much easier. People looked up to superheroes while they ignored wallflower teenagers and Peter somehow managed to be both with no idea how to pull it off.

He was starting to figure out who he was and he had felt as if it was going somewhere right before the trip to Berlin. And then his eyes were opened to the bigger, much more appealing picture. That day at the airport he saw himself reflected in all those heroes he looked up to. For a few moments he was one of them, a sense of belonging settling deeply into his soul. Coming back home and the confrontation with reality felt like a slap in the face, because it made Peter realize that the last place he wanted to be in was his own skin.

When they sat down to eat, Peter was too much in his head to follow through with his promise to Ned. He stayed silent and didn’t look up from his plate, and generally pretended that he was completely fine.

After ten minutes of listening in on Charlie and Ned talking quietly about Harry Potter, he stood up abruptly.

He couldn’t do it. He was too tired and too done with this day to bother with anything.

“I’m not hungry,” he said to no one in particular before took his bag and left as quickly as his legs would carry him.

Of course this moment came back to bite him in the ass when he arrived to the Physics classroom and he realized he had to sit with Ned for three more hours.

It was incredibly awkward, mostly because they were both trying to pretend that everything was okay. Peter knew that he overreacted. He also knew that Ned probably wasn’t aware that he had pushed a bit too hard, triggering the side of Peter’s personality that went into nope-can’t-do-it mode every time something like this happened. They never really talked about feelings and stuff, and maybe it was one of the reasons why they kept misunderstanding each other.

Either way, whatever it was a case of bad communication or something else altogether, Peter didn’t want to think about it anymore. When the last lesson of the day was finally finished, he ran out of school like he was being chased, making his way to the nearest secluded alleyway and changing into the Spiderman suit. Putting it on felt just as amazing as it did back in Berlin. When he pressed the button on his chest and the suit activated, he felt like he could truly breathe for the first time in two days.

With a deep breath he took a leap at the wall and crawled up until he made it to the top of the building. He jogged across the roof before jumping of the ledge, catching himself on a string of web at the last moment. As he swung around the neighbourhood in search of something to do, he slowly relaxed. With the wind howling in his ears, it was easy to forget about his troubles.

Here and now there was no Peter Parker fumbling around and ruining everything he touched.

Here and now he was someone better, someone special, and he would hold on to it for as long as he could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you liked it, even though that was way more angst than I planned for. 
> 
> As always, I highly appreciate your kudos and comments. You can also check out my tumblr (lossie92), since I tend to be more active there. Also, if you have any questions or simply want to talk about random stuff, tumblr is the place to do it!
> 
> BTW we will be getting into some HOCO action next chapter and I honestly can’t wait. So many scenes I want to write, so much fun to be had... ;)

**Author's Note:**

> No Peter just yet, but he will be making an appearance in the next chapter, so stay tuned!
> 
> As always, please feel free to leave kudos/comments! Constructive criticism is always greatly appreciated ;)


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